eBook Royalty Comparison

[elizabethmccoy]

I suspect this will be an ongoing project, comparing the royalties offered by various ebook publishers/distributors.

Amazon.com (Kindle): 35% (prices below 2.99) or 70% (2.99-9.99). Subtract at least a penny for delivery fees, and probably around 10 cents.
http://forums.kindledirectpublishing.com/kdpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=453
http://forums.kindledirectpublishing.com/kdpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=377&categoryID=32
[Have heard from MCA Hogarth that Kindle pays promptly and apparently accurately. They do not, however, yet have a master-page for a book where "all copies sold to date" reside, and all their data is by-book, rather than for all books by the author.]

NOTE! Purchases which are not from one of Amazon's dozen or so "approved" countries will use the 35% royalty, even if you picked 70%!

Barnes & Noble (PubIt!): 40% (prices below 2.99) or 65% (2.99-9.99).
http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=support

Bookbrewer: Charges minimum $39.99, sends to ebook stores (iBooks, etc.), and takes a 25% cut of what you get from them (40%-45%, depending). You get no ePub file for your own. "Advanced" package does not submit to ebookstores, but does give you the ePub file.
Amazon.com via Bookbrewer: 40%-45% (2.99-9.99)
Apple iBooks via Bookbrewer: 40%-45% (2.99-9.99)
Barnes & Noble via Bookbrewer: 40%-45% (2.99-9.99)
Borders via Bookbrewer: 40%-45% (2.99-9.99)
Google Editions via Bookbrewer: 40%-45% (2.99-9.99)
Kobo via Bookbrewer: 40%-45% (2.99-9.99)
http://bookbrewer.com/content/author-agreement-basic-publishing-package
http://bookbrewer.com/content/borders-choose-bookbrewer-power-its-ebook-self-publishing-service
http://bookbrewer.zendesk.com/entries/382682-what-s-the-difference-between-the-two-packages
http://bookbrewer.zendesk.com/entries/306701-how-do-the-book-royalties-break-down

DriveThruFiction.com: "Exclusive publishers receive a 70% royalty on all digital sales and 70% royalty on the margin (sales price - print cost) on all print sales. They also receive more free promotion on the marketplace.
Non-exclusive publishers receive a 65% royalty rate."
http://www.drivethrufiction.com/join.php

eBookMall.com: 50%. Minimum price $2.98. Has $19.95 listing fee.
http://publishing.ebookmall.com/information/distributionagreement.htm
http://publishing.ebookmall.com/ebook-sales/guidelines.htm

eBooks.com: only deals with publishers.
http://www.ebooks.com/information/authors.asp

Fictionwise: "40%, with some subvendor caveats"
[Bujold, on the Bujold mailing list. F'wise only takes previously-published authors and wants/wanted exclusive ebook rights. Fictionwise is also stated to pay on-time and quarterly.]

Google: Varies, though "the majority" goes to the publisher (or presumably self-publisher) when selling a book. They also show "relevant ads" alongside the sample pages, and "a majority" of any click-through revenue is "shared" with the publisher/self-publisher. It is a little unclear if Google always offers to sell the book itself, or if it only links to an author's own buy-this-book web page and/or a third party distributor (such as B&N or Amazon). Generating false click-throughs on the ads, or giving people incentives to visit the page and click the links, can result in Google ditching the book.
http://books.google.com/support/partner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1187465
http://books.google.com/support/partner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=106167
http://books.google.com/support/partner/bin/answer.py?answer=18625

Kobobooks: "a competitive vendor commission based upon your suggested retail price"
http://kobobooks.com/companyinfo/authorsnpublishers.html

Lulu.com: 80%? (hard to figure out without actually publishing a book); may have a 99c fee.
"Your commission from retail sales is 80% after the retailer takes their share (30%). So, you get 80% of 70% of the Price of your book."
Apple via Lulu: 56%
http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Publishing-Process/How-to-Publish-an-eBook/ta-p/33458?cid=us_ebk_faq3
http://www.lulu.com/apple-ipad-publishing

All Romance/Omnilit ( http://www.omnilit.com )
60% of the price (or discounted sale price).
http://www.omnilit.com/publisherRegistration.html

Smashwords.com: 85% of net. Subtract PayPal transaction fee, spread across entire purchase.
    Apple via Smashwords: 60%.
    Diesel via Smashwords: 60%
    Barnes & Noble via Smashwords: 60%.
    Kobobooks via Smashwords: 60% (.99-12.99) in US & Canada. 38% elsewhere.
     Sony via Smashwords: 60%.
http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/channelManager

XinXii (European company): 40% (.99-2.48), 70% (2.49+). German VAT (19%) will adjust this. You must click to get paid, and the minimum transfer to PayPal is ~$27USD/EUR 20.00
XinXii can distrubute to Apple, giving 50% "for works with a price greater than $0.99 / £0.99"
http://www.xinxii.com/gd_cms.php/en?page=revenues_en
http://www.xinxii.com/faq.php/en



Potentially helpful sites:
http://www.ebookcrossroads.com/ebook-sellers.html

Comments

[julesjones]

Thanks for putting this together -- it's useful to have this stuff all in one place.

[elizabethmccoy]

You're welcome! I'm glad that it's useful for more than just me. (If you find any sites I've missed, please feel free to send me the data, or links to it.)

[castiron]

Google apparently doesn't disclose their royalty information:
http://books.google.com/support/partner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1187465

[elizabethmccoy]

Ah, thank you for digging that up! It linked to some other, less-confusing, pages as well, so I can update the Google stuff now.

[archangelbeth]

Investigate whsmiths.co.uk. Add http://indieaisle.com

royalties

[dorelmin]

So strictly from a fan's perspective it would be most advantageous for you to purchase your books from the Smashwords site?

Re: royalties (this time from the *right* account! >_> )

[elizabethmccoy]

For the royalty factor, Smashwords wins, hands down. They only pay quarterly, but the amount of that royalty surpasses all the others. (Plus they don't use DRM, and you can get any format you like.) This is especially noticeable for 99c short stories, because everywhere else chops the royalties for the small stuff -- and Smashwords doesn't. The PayPal fees come out, then Smashwords hands me 80% of what's left, which at worst gives me about 50c, instead of 30c or 35c.

If you want to know the Also Bought King, that would be Amazon. Hands-down, they are the best at enabling "discoverability" once you hit the magic numbers and get onto the also-bought lists of other books. Most of my sales are sparked by those lists, far as I can tell. (I have to have good art and an intriguing description, of course!)

For Also Bought runners-up, it would be any seller that has Also Bought lists. I feel that having all one's eggs in the Amazon basket is a bit precarious, for my tastes. (One alteration in their Also-Bought algorithms and my sales there could plummet, for instance.) So if someone prefers the Nook, there's nothing wrong with potentially giving the books a boost there. The drawback is that I use Smashwords as my distributor to everywhere but Amazon, which means that if I discover a flaw in a book that needs fixing... Depending on the distributor in question, it may take ages for the fix to propagate! (Kobo used to be really really really awful about this. Barnes and Noble is currently the king of "oh, we'll get that book up mañana... if we feel like it.") The payments are also a bit... delayed, since Smashwords can't pay me till the distributors pay them.

So really, my answer gives the choice back to the fan: pick what makes you happiest! There are authorial advantages in all cases. (And the best advantage is if you choose to review your purchases, on your blog/journal, GoodReads, or wherever. *grin*)

Thank you for asking!